As you can see with this vote, elections do have consequences! Let’s not let them turn Pennsylvania into Wisconsin, no matter how many Koch-loving hacks we have in the state house: An attempt to pass a controversial amendment to a bill that would restrict union dues collection from state and school employees’ paychecks narrowly failed […]

So, Utah decided to just give the homeless places to live. The results are what anyone with sense, or who has followed the topic would expect: Utah’s Housing First program cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, about half of the $20,000 it cost to treat and care for homeless people on the street. Imagine [...]

At the risk of offending self-described *right-wing Christians* (not average run-of-the-mill churchgoers and christians), this bizarro view of the world is not uncommon among their cohort. Right wing Christians are getting all in a huff because reporters are finally starting to get a clue about how their worldview may manifest itself in action. No, Christians would *never* engage in violence, they say. But if you accept their denials, you may be missing the part of their argument that is the most important to figuring out how dangerous they really are. Here’s a snippet from a post by RedState writer Eric Erickson that contains the money quote:

Secular leftists and Islamists are both of this world. Christians may be traveling through, but we are most definitely not of the world. In fact, Christ commands us to throw off our ties to this world. But the things of this world love this world and hate the things of God. That’s why secular leftism can embrace both activist homosexuals and activist muslims when the latter would, when true to their faith, be happy to kill the former.

All of them can pile on and condemn the Christian because the Christian is just passing through, a stranger in a strange land.

Over the next week, assuming the budget fight in Washington doesn’t over shadow it, you can expect lots more gloating that the guy in Norway described himself as a conservative Christian. Never mind that a conservative Christian would not do what the guy did. The left, however, will not be persuaded otherwise. They are of this world and this world is all that matters until the last day.

John McCain, take note, they will not respond to reason because they are not of this world. It’s not that they are out of this world. They just have no interest in what happens to it at this point. If there is evil in the world, it will be purged. But it can’t be purged unless there is a Great Tribulation or an Apocalypse. They see “signs of the end times”. The world is chaotic, cause and effect are disconnected and everything is violent, uncertain and random. But these signs say that it will all be over soon. Earthquakes, famine, disease, a New World Order, the sign of the Beast. Nevermind that 30 years ago, this could have been applied to the Soviet Union, a different famine in Africa and AIDS. Now, it is the threat of jihad from Muslims that makes them anxious. Not extremist Muslims, ALL Muslims. Forget that this is crazy and that the vast majority of American Muslims are going to ignore the command to go on jihad and murder all of us in our beds. They don’t have the time or inclination. They have full time jobs and kids to cart around to soccer games and bake sales and mortgages and stuff like that. Who has time for slaying hundreds of millions of infidels?

But this imbalance of a tiny minority of Muslims getting the initiative and capacity to slay the rest of us does not occur to the self described “right wing Christian”.

Nor do they worry much about wrecking the global economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, they may consider themselves to be catalysts in a twisted interpretation of scripture. If the world becomes bad enough and conditions unliveable, then surely Christ will return. So, they’re only holding out on the debt ceiling for our own good. Yes, it’s brutal and horrible for the people who have to suffer but it has to be done.

You might wonder why people who consider themselves to be “not of this world” would even bother running for office. Presumably, there isn’t a damn thing they can do about what’s going on anyway and God will sort it all out. But God is going too slowly for their timetable. After all, we can’t wait forever for Christ to return. Some of us might die in the meantime. So, we might have to push God a little bit with a catastrophe of our own making. And Barack Obama may give them a good excuse to start agitating for a world changing event. If he’s a secret Muslim running a *Christian* nation, could there be any clearer sign?

You can’t reason with them, John McCain. You can’t persuade them, John Boehner. You can’t plead, beg or cajole. They will have their Armageddon. The only thing you might be able to do is force them to obey the oath they swore before God to uphold the Constitution. But even that might not work because they answer only to God. If you throw them in jail for violating their oaths, that makes them martyrs. Maybe the best thing to do would be to expel them from their House or Senate positions. That’s what I would be going for. But even though they are completely unhinged when it comes to the debt ceiling, they might be useful in some other capacity for House leadership. And anyway, only Democrats are forced out. Never Republicans. Republicans know they need to keep every one of their votes while Democrats are committed to purging any inconvenient ones on their side. (And we wonder why they are always so weak.)

So, there you have it. If some of the Tea Partiers who claim to be right wing Christians are holding out, it might be because they get their marching orders from God, filtered through Glenn Beck or some other ignorant blowhard. They are going to bring us all down joyfully, putting their faith in God alone, listening only to him and the other people who think just like they do. The only way to avert global economic meltdown in the face of such obstinacy may be to exercise the 14th Amendment option and worry about the fallout afterwards. The fallout may necessarily include filing procedures against the holdouts for violating their oaths. I would. It’s not a partisan thing, it’s a sanity thing. Government can not function when the people elected to run it see it as an obstacle to their heavenly government.

People will do all kinds of crazy things in the name of God. I wouldn’t say they’re insane. They’re quite sane. They just have a different worldview, reinforced by endtime TV preachers, unethically ambitious political mouthpieces and global media moguls. This is the world we live in and they are part of it because they participate in the spread of that worldview. Whether they appreciate it or not, if they take us down, they’re going down with us. And there will be no Rapture. If the Tea Party drives us into the greatest Depression we’ve ever known, they may consider a cold prison in Norway a better alternative to what the rest of the world will want to do with them.

Addendum: This is the Congressional Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion

; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Body: This paper, or pre-draft, or sketch, or whatever it is, started out with this title: "With The 12-Point Platform, this won't happen: An aristocracy of credentialism in the 20%." But then I realized I'd gotten in deeper than I thought -- one of those posts were the framework and the notes overwhelm the original idea -- and as it tur […]

This is a big bunch of catch-up, here, 'cause it's been a helluva few weeks. Gaius Publius interviewed Alan Grayson on Virtually Speaking, where Grayson discussed "how he 'cracked the nut' that allows him to get progressive legislation passed. Part of his secret - his goal is to be a person who 'gets things done for the progress […]